


Striderstein’s monster

by RatKing_max



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst, Dark mage Rose, Druid Roxy, Frankenstein's monster Dave, Gen, Ghost John, Hurt, M/M, Monster Hunter Jake, Monsters au, Necromancer Dirk, Necromancy, Sadness, Werewolf Jade, accidental murder
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:29:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22131808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RatKing_max/pseuds/RatKing_max
Summary: The life and times of some sad edgy monsters.
Relationships: Jake English/Dirk Strider
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	1. Dave

**Author's Note:**

> New fic! New fic!
> 
> The perspective is going to switch quite a bit. So the chapter title will be the character we're from the perspective of. 
> 
> This shits going to get angsty my fellas and gals. It's gonna be great.

You swear you used to be good at art. You have the sketchbooks to prove it. Not a year and a half ago, you could draw like a fucking expert. It had taken you years to get where you were; you had put real genuine effort into learning. At first, just for those dumb ass comics, but over time you realized how much you liked being good at it, loved seeing the pictures in your mind translated down on to the page. You’d thought maybe it’s what you’d pursue when you got old enough to leave the fucking haunted house you were raised in. Lofty visions of being the next Banksy, a real cool, mysterious mother fucker whose work sells for millions. An unrealistic dream, you'd probably have never gotten there, but now you'll never even be able to try.

A year and a half ago, you died. Bleed out all over the floor of Bros lab. That should have been the end of it. If you were anyone else, it would have been. But your Dave Strider and brother is the master of crimes against god and nature. So his little oopsy fratricide was nothing but an inconvenience. A month after you died, he woke you back up. And every moment since then has been like slow, dull torture.

Your numb, your cold, you can’t eat, you can barely even feel. You’ll never be able to leave the grounds again, never see the world, never age past 15. You are completely and utterly fucked.

You can’t even enjoy your goddamn hobbies anymore. You thought there’s no way this mess would affect your ability to do something as simple as drawing. But here you fucking are, trying to force your stiff hand to hold the pencil right. You remember all of the techniques and methods you spent years learning. But your stupid fucking dead hands won't move right.

Another misshapen blob scrawled across you’re page; it was meant to be a bird. Not even a detailed one, just a little cartoon bird. Two years ago You could have drawn it with your eyes closed. Now you can barely recognize what it's meant to be. You stare down at it for a long moment, before quickly and violently turning the page. Trying again, then, when that one turned out just as bad, again.

Pages full of lumpy shitty birds. Books full of failed art. A mountain of pencils broken in frustration. You want to cry; you have for a long while now. Your Pencil trails shakily across the page, movements jerky and wrong, and you sob loudly. Only a mental reaction, just the noise. Your tear ducts were removed when your body was being “fixed.” You force back the sobs; it’s not worth the embarrassment. Instead, you push the sketchbook away, knocking it on the floor. 

You're to cool for that art shit anyway.


	2. Rose

For as long as you’ve known them, the striders have lived disconnected from society, deep in an appropriately eerie corner of the same wood you and your father call home. Though unlike Roxy's humble, folksy cabin, they live in what can only be described as a manor. A looming dark Victorian structure that seems plucked from a Poe novel. Massive spiked rot iron gate, dead yellow lawn, reaching skeletal trees, an overabundance of crows included. If you described the home to any child off the street and asked them who lived there, the answer would almost universally be monsters and necromancers. And in this case, they would be entirely correct.

Dirk Striders' rouse was a clever one. Hidden not behind lies but truth slathered in ironic intent. Not only does he live in a haunted house out of a child’s Halloween special. But he tends to talk about his necromantic crimes openly and directly. His laboratory is hidden, but much of his library is not. Everyone simply assumes he is dedicated to an ironic facade of evil. This is still true, but as is often the case, he is severely steps of irony ahead of everyone around him. It’s a useful gambit if a little over-complicated for your taste. You respect it, though, and have taken notes from his delivery to add to your own.

You and Roxy approach the large dark oak front door. Under your father's feet, dead grass peeks briefly to life before quickly wilting again. The corrupting influence of what goes on in the home is too strong for even Roxy's powerful Druidic magic to bring back. You have to wonder how your father justifies the complete lack of healthy plant growth surrounding the house. For how smart he is, if there’s one thing Roxy Loland is best at, it’s willful ignorance towards his friend's darker sides. You suspect on some level he knows that there is something off about Mr. Strider. But you also guess that it’s something he’d rather not think about. If evidence isn’t shoved directly under his nose, he will continue to allow himself to believe Dirk is an utterly innocent sorcerer with a flair for the dramatically dark. This is handy as the same situational foolishness applies to you too; it’s very easy to get your father to ignore any slip-ups in your act.

Roxy leans against the doorway and knocks firmly, glancing over at you with a smile.

“Got your homework and all that junk, right?” He asks.

“Of course I do; what do you take me for father? I am nothing if not an excellent pupil. ” You reply, jostling the bag on your shoulder. 

“Yeah yeah, smartypants, just checking.” Roxy laughed, reaching out and ruffling your hair. You huff, pushing it back into place as the door opens, Dirk staring blank-faced out at the two of you. 

“Dirk, omg!” Roxy chirps, hugging him. Dirk gives him a rigid pat on the back before he pulls away. 

“Sup.” He says and steps aside to welcome the two of you in. Nodding at you as you enter.

“Is Dave back? It feels like it’s been years since I’ve seen the little guy.” Roxy says, looking around the room for any sign of the boy. You look away, the usual creeping disgust you feel anytime you have to listen to Dirk lie about his brother building in your chest.

“Nope, still boarding school.” Dirk shrugs. 

“Bummer. He’ll be back for summer, right?” Roxy asks. 

“If his grades pick up. Right now, he’ll have to take summer classes if he wants to pass.” Dirk replies. He is such a good liar; if it weren’t about something so awful, you would be genuinely impressed.

“Lame, why’s he even have to go to that school anyway. Neither of us did that shit, and look at us now. We could totally homeschool him like we homeschool Rose.” Roxy says

“he's not like us, Roxy. The kids not magic. He’s going to have a normal life; I couldn’t give that to him at home. It’s what’s best for him.” Dirk lies. You're glad you're standing behind Roxy, so he can’t see the look of utter disgust that comes over your face at Dirk’s words. It’s such complete bullshit.

In the back of your mind, you think of calling him out. Think of telling Roxy where Dave really is. He’s probably less than thirty feet away, tucked away somewhere in the lab underneath them, with the rest of Dirks failed experiments. You can imagine the horror that would come across Roxy's face. Can see him Turing his power on the necromancer. While that happened, you’d call the police. In the government's eyes, necromancy was one of the worst crimes anyone could commit. They’d bring out everything they had, and dirk strider might be good, but he isn't fighting a military’s worth of mages good. With what all they would find in his basement, you know for a fact he’d never see the light of day again. He’d get what he deserves. 

You, of course, keep your mouth shut. There are many reasons to stay silent. There's Dave for one. Even Roxy would, at this point, see them as a crime against nature. And while you agree he should never have been forced back to life, it’s already happened; he’s at least mostly alive again. You know they’d kill him, Then they’d banish John into the afterlife. Even if they probably shouldn’t still be around, the idea of taking them out of their half-lives now that they have it feels like nothing short of murder.

This isn’t your only reason though, no matter what you like to tell yourself, there’s a much more selfish reason you’ll never tell Dirk’s secret. They’d burn his library, all of that knowledge gone like that. Hundreds of books full of pure power you’d likely never find anywhere else. Power he’s teaching you. 

That was the deal when you found out about what he did to Dave. You won't tell Roxy if he teaches you everything he knows of the dark Magic’s. No matter how awful it makes you, you’d never break that deal. There is too much knowledge at stake. 

So instead, you pointedly ignore the whole conversation. Wondering over to the kitchen table and getting out your books as across the room, Dirk tells Roxy fake stories from Dave’s nonexistent boarding school.

Soon after, the conversation stops, and he’s drifted over to the kitchen table, glancing over your books.

“You did the practice I asked you to?” Dirk asks

“I did.” You say. He waves his hands in a vague show me gesture, and you shrug, pulling your wands out of their holsters on your sides. You muttered the simple indication, rotating your wrists in a graceful arc. The book on the table shakes before gently drifting up as if being pulled by strings. You flick one of the wands, and the book opens up, flicking quickly through the pages before stopping open and floating on the page, holding the incantation for the spell you're currently using to hold the book. 

“Damnnnn Rose, that’s some real wizard shit!” Roxy cheers excitedly, Looking wildly impressed at your display. He really shouldn’t be. It’s an incredibly simple spell, one you taught yourself twenty minutes before leaving for Dirks. If, after all your training, that was all you learned, it would be incredibly embarrassing for both you and dirk. But you don’t care about sorcery, and it’s not what dirk is teaching you. There’s a reason you choose that school of magic to be your cover-up. It’s about the furthest from Druidcraft light magic could be. Roxy has no clue what’s easy or hard, so making your minor skills in the teaching look impressive wasn’t difficult.

Dirk knows much more about it, and even as he gave you an approving nod, you can tell he’s unimpressed. 

“Not bad kid, much better than last time. But we’ve gotta work on your incantations. Its ‘volaar sin aluse,’ Aluse, with an L.” Dirk corrects, even though you didn’t actually say it wrong. It is just a show for Roxy.

“Alright, that’s about all the mage nerd stuff I can handle. I’ll be back in a few hours, sweetie.” Roxy said, hugging you.

“See you then, dad.” You say, hugging him back. He smiles, patting you on the shoulder before looking up at dirk. 

“And you still owe me lunch, don’t think I’ve forgotten.” He said, grinning. Dirk gives a minor upward twitch of the mouth in response.

“I remember. Sometime next week?” 

“Hell yeah. Good luck with your magic books.” Roxy calls, waving back to you as he leaves. The moment he’s out the door, you close and pack away the mage spellbook and pull out your much larger grimoire. 

“Did you do your real practice, or were you just bullshitting?” 

“I don’t know what I’ve done to make everyone accuse me of slacking off.”

“Fine, prove it.” He says challengingly. Pulling a small metal cage out from a near by cabinet and setting it on the table. Inside are two dead rats. You focus on them, letting a steady breath out of your nose. Your Metal wands spark as you hit them together, black threads of energy linking them as you pull them apart. The incantation you say this time is much more complicated, more like a barking chant than the graceful magic words of sorcery. At the end of your chant, your arms swing down, wand needles sticking down into the tails of rat corpses, sending a spark of purple energy through them. There’s an awful wet screeching from within the cage as the rats begin to convulse. Then you pull the needles away, and as you do, the shaking rats get up to their feet. In stiff unnatural jerks, they begin to move around their cage, matching the slow circles your making in the air with the tip of your needles.

The look dirk gives you this time is distinctly more genuinely impressed. He nods approvingly.

“Your posture could be better, but all in all, not a bad showing. Still, though, they're only following your movement.” He says, eyes focusing on your needles; there’s a brief flicker of orange magic behind his shades. the magic in your wands flicker out. The rats fall back over, dead, and on moving. “It’s a start.”   
-

Over the next two hours, he shows you the start of the spell to send the dead off to complete simple tasks on their own. By the end, you're able to make one of them stand up, and grab a button that had been placed in the cage, then bring it back to you, all without you having to move them at all manually. It’s jerky and slow, and most of the time, the rat falls over halfway through the task. But it’s a start.

It’s also not why you're here. during a lull in the lesson, while he’s going through his grimoire, you decide to spring what you actually want on him. 

“This isn’t exactly what I’d been hoping you’d teach me.”

“You're not ready to be raising ghosts and shit yet. you’ve got to learn how to walk before you can run.” He says without looking up. You roll your eyes.

“I meant all of necromancy. I want to learn something more powerful.”

“if you do it right, there is nothing more powerful than necromancy. That’s why the government is so scared shitless of it. It’s as strong as it gets.”

“I thought we agreed not to lie to each other, dirk. We both know that’s not true.” You say. He still hasn’t looked at you, and it’s starting to get under your skin.

“You find something stronger I'd like to know. Until then, you're just going to have to deal with this being the best of the best.” 

“Tell me about the old ones.”

“There shitty Hentie monsters a few trillion light-years away. There isn’t much to say about them. Got nothing to do with us.” Dirk say, finally looking up at you.

“They are the source of all dark magic.” You state simply, letting this fact you both already knew hang in the air. 

“So,” 

“So I don’t see why you insist on siphoning off their power and working on fumes when they offer the whole of it so openly.” 

“You’ve got no clue what your talking about kid.” 

“I do. I’m starting to think I know more than You do about it.” You said. Dirk laughed a low humorless laugh.

“Listen, I've dealt with a lot of shady creatures in my life, demons, fairy’s, you name it. If it's magic, I’ve talked to it. And I can tell you right now. Those space squids are the shadiest of all of them. They’ll fuck you over the moment you open the door to them.” Dirk said. 

“So, you’ve had correspondence with them?” You ask.

“Of course I have. Don’t think I didn’t see the power that’s there too. But they take it for you. You might be able to get stronger faster with them, but by the time they're done, you're not you anymore. So give up on it. This is the only way to get real power without having to whore yourself out to HP Lovecraft's wet nightmares.” He said, tapping the thick grimoire on his lap.

“But if you’d just-“ you start to argue again, but he cuts you off.

“Drop it rose. You’ve got no fucking clue what you want to mess with. It’s not worth what they give you.” He says firmly. You give in, shutting your mouth. After a moment, he sighs. “Let’s try again.” He says finally, dropping the bead back into the cage.

You don’t bring it up for the rest of the lesson. You don’t have to; you’ve learned everything you needed to. He’s worked with the old ones. So He must have a summoning book somewhere. It’s impossible to interact with them beyond some minor words without it. If it were anyone else, you’d be worried he could have gotten rid of it, but Dirk would never get rid of something so powerful. Your next step is clear to you now. You’ve got to get into his library.


End file.
